


postcards from l.a.

by sinead



Series: popslash bits 'n things [1]
Category: NSYNC, Popslash
Genre: Grocery Shopping, House Hunting, Los Angeles, M/M, pot smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 13:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6286132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinead/pseuds/sinead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris visits L.A., around the time of the hiatus, in some loosely related scenes.  (No plot to speak of.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	postcards from l.a.

_i won't be happy without you around_

 

Chris worried about Lance sometimes. He spun the most incredible line of bullshit in interviews, about how he was looking for an old fashioned girl, but in his private life, Lance had gotten ferocious about his sexuality and would fuck no one but guys who were so sure that they were queer that they had started sucking cock right out of the womb. Chris thought this was some sort of weird compensation mechanism for having a career as a heartthrob to twelve year old girls. It also pissed him off because his own standards were so much less well-defined; this put him in the category of Just Not Gay Enough For Lance, which meant that Lance would only sleep with him when he was desperate.

***

Pennsylvania was cold and Orlando was full of tourists, so at the sad ass-end of winter, Chris found himself on a plane to L.A., going to visit JC. It was two in the morning when he arrived, but since two in the morning translated to early evening, Chasez-time, JC was there at the airport to pick him up. He was wearing an ugly as fuck bucket hat and blue jeans that bagged at the knees, and his shirt appeared to be misbuttoned. Chris had never seen anything so wonderful in his life. He wanted to put his arms around JC's waist and hoist him into the air with joy, but his knees were protesting hours of confinement on the plane, so he settled for a lengthy hug. They got in the car and headed north. As they approached the Hollywood hills, the traffic thinned, and JC rolled down the windows. A sweet fragrance crept in, growing with each passing block.

"It's the boxwood and the jasmine," JC said. "They start blooming in the hills in February."  


  


_we had a hedge back home in the suburbs_

 

"C, I think I'd maybe like to look at some houses," Chris said at breakfast. It was actually about noon, and they were eating from JC's vast hoard of Hot Pockets. JC looked uncomprehending, so he added, "out here. A house out here, to buy. Maybe." JC made a muffled noise, like air leaking out of a balloon. Chris held up his hand. "Please. Joey kept insisting we do shots last night and I don't think I can take any clapping or squealing."

JC was nodding vigorously, his face squinched up with joy. He said, "I'll get you the number of my agent, we can call her today. She's cool."

In the car on the way to the first address, Chris juggled a bewildering array of printouts full of blurry pictures of houses and incantations like "LRG LVRM", "N OF SUNSET" or "GRANITES." JC chattered happily about his adventures in house-hunting.

"You have to be specific about what you want. I picked the neighborhood first, then I told her I wanted a view." They were swooping along Mulholland, and as they rounded a curve there were 180 degrees of the LA basin spread before Chris' eyes; even the garages in this neighborhood had views. "And a room I could use as a music studio. And that it had to have the right vibe, that was very important."

Chris pictured JC in his flip flops and wild hair, talking about views and vibes. "And this was enough guidance for--" he looked at the card he had in his hand, "--Louise?"

"Actually, the first houses she showed me weren't right at all. Some of them were sort of...dumps." JC widened his eyes and lowered his voice on the last word. "Then I told her that I also wanted all copper plumbing, earthquake retrofitting to better than current code and that I wanted to pay no more than a half percent below market, and she found my house in six days." He paused and glanced over. Chris was staring in speechless admiration. "What? a half percent below market was very reasonable at the time."

"I forget about your cutthroat capitalist ways when I'm not around you for a while," Chris said. JC grinned happily, as befitted the possessor of 3LVLS, ALL HWD FLRS + CNYN VUS.

 

_i can no longer shop happily_

 

They were in Justin's neighborhood trying to buy beer at what passed for a grocery store, the one that Chris privately referred to as "Food Shopping For Dummies." Everything came with instructions. The glossy pyramid of avocados had a sign about how to pick the perfect avocado. The pineapples had little tags attached to their crowns that proclaimed "how to trim and store your fresh pineapple!" All of the wine in the liquor department had menu suggestions, and if you stood and looked indecisive for longer than thirty seconds, one of the helpful employees was sure to pop out of a nearby aisle and say something patronizing. The store was full of yuppies talking on their hands-free headsets while they shopped, and the brown-skinned housekeepers of the wealthy. He could see Justin curiously checking out some nasty looking mushrooms that cost forty-three dollars a pound--the vegetable equivalent of bling. In this moment, he missed Lance desperately, because Lance would understand how not normal this was. Justin was still pretty heavily invested in the idea that he was a regular guy, and Chris never had the heart to disabuse him of that notion.

JC, now, Chris was pretty sure JC got up every day at the crack of noon and got in his Mercedes convertible and drove to the studio to conduct sonic experiments with his assorted pals and thanked god he wasn't normal, but then JC had always been kind of a special case.

***

Justin and Chris smoked some pot and giggled. Then they smoked some more. Then they were hungry, so Chris banged through the cupboards in Justin's immaculate kitchen, looking for food, and found nothing but vitamins. "What the fuck, Timberlake?" Chris held up a jar of bee pollen. "Tell me this isn't what you're eating these days."

"I haven't been here much lately," Justin said sheepishly. "Let's go to the store." It was two in the morning and Food Shopping For Dummies was long closed, so they got in the car and went to the rock and roll Ralph's on Sunset.

Chris left Justin owlishly contemplating the wall of chips. The ferociously bright shiny packaging under the fluorescent lights was hurting his eyes, so he muttered, "I'm going. over here. Ice cream," and wandered off. He blundered into the produce section and got waylaid by some lemons--they were so _yellow_ \--but eventually, he found the chilly glass walls of the freezer aisle. There was someone standing there, a guy with a cart. He was wearing a bucket hat and inspecting a package of Hot Pockets, with his back to Chris. Chris glanced at the box--Chicken & Cheddar With Broccoli--and then looked at the hat. Then he said, "C, no way--go for the pizza ones, or the jalapeno steak and cheese."

"Wondered when you were going to recognize me," JC said calmly. "Don't worry, I'm not going to buy these for the house and force you to eat broccoli. I needed to get out of the studio for a minute, so I'm doing the snack run."

"Oh," Chris stood there a moment, and then admitted, "I'm sort of stoned. And I left Justin someplace, so I'd probably better go find him before he gets panicky."

 

_i've got my giant hit discotheque album_

 

Justin and Chris flopped onto Justin's bed in stoned euphoria. Justin murmured, half-asleep,

"remember that golf course we drove by in Japan? the one under the mountain?"

Chris remembered a blur of green so intense it lingered on the eye, that seemed to run right up to the foot of a tall conical peak, blue and snow-capped like the mountain in a child's book illustration. In the airy silence of the big bedroom, he heard the yip of a coyote on the hillside. "I remember. It was before either of us really knew how to play."

"mmm. have to go back--sometime--play there."

"You're right, J." Chris leaned over and kissed his forehead. "Go to sleep."

The bed was enormous and elaborate, with Egyptian cotton sheets, inset wrought iron candle holders and many tasseled ornamental pillows, like a porn set designed by Martha Stewart. Chris privately couldn't imagine having sex in it, but Justin's sensibilities about these things had been formed by Lynn, and they had probably picked out the bed together. When he thought of Justin and sex, the first thing that still came to mind was Germany, where fifteen year old Justin had been determined to get his cherry popped and then have lots of sex, and Chris had taken it upon himself to be sure none of it was with an axe murderer or a sleazy journalist. Sometimes watching out for Justin in those days had been like walking a large, unruly but sweet-tempered dog, one who lunged joyfully at every passing squirrel and jumped up and licked the faces of total strangers.

***

Justin saw Missy Elliot a few times when he was in Burbank, working with Timbaland; her tour hadn't started yet, so she showed up at the studio occasionally. She was funny and kind, but she made him a little nervous. She still talked about Aaliyah all the time, and Justin didn't quite know what to do with that. She didn't seem grief-stricken, at least not the way he would have imagined it; actually, Missy talking about Aaliyah was generally cheerful and matter of fact. She tended to sound as if Aaliyah had just stepped out for a cup of coffee. Which was weird, Justin thought. Then he thought about what he would do if Chris died, and figured if he could manage to keep talking about Chris as if he was in the next room, he probably would.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted to my LJ in Feb. 2007. It was originally intended to be a longer, more cohesive story, but I never finished that, and I liked these little scenes enough to string them together and keep them. 
> 
> The italicized headings are from Clash songs.


End file.
